The SCALE team is very pleased to announce our second keynote speaker - Christine Corbett Moran – for Saturday, March 4, as she presents "Open Source Software as Activism". Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech, Open Source and mobile app developer and NASA finalist are but a few of the achievements Dr. Corbett Moran brings to the party.

UpSCALE is a set of lightning talks held at SCALE in partnership with OpenSource.com, in the style of Ignite presentations. Speakers will get 5 minutes to enlighten the audience. Slides will auto-advance while chosen speakers deliver their message, a brief story of open source deliciousness. The format makes for a fast paced, fun event for participants and audience.

The UpSCALE talks will take place on Saturday March 4th at 8pm in Ballroom DE. Please join us as members of the Free and Open Source community do their best to beat the clock and get their ideas out!

In recent years the SCaLE program has grown to include an increasing amount of security related content including presentations, tutorials, and our long running PGP keysigning party. This year we are again growing to include a hacking competition target during the conference which aims to test the security skills of the participants in a live setting.

For the last few years the Bad Voltage team (a podcast all about technology, open source, Linux, and anything else we think is fun), have delivered a live show at SCALE. This has always been a great time, but this year, well, it is time to turn up the volume with an incredible party sponsored by our friends at Ticketmaster and Linode.

Linux is a robust and secure operating system with a rich array of applications. The Southern California Linux Expo is once again providing those who want to start using Linux an opportunity to learn how. SCALE will provide an Installfest + basic system administration class on Saturday, March 4th, 2017. The class will be held again on Sunday March 5th.

Training will be provided by the Linux Foundation's professional trainers, assisted by skilled SCALE volunteers.

It's time. Yes people if you have a 5-minute talk about an open source topic ready to share, then a submission to UpSCALE, in partnership with Opensource.com, is something you should consider over the new few weeks. Submit your lightning talk proposal before February 12 for a chance of glory on the upSCALE main stage.

Though it may not be the most appealing of metaphors, the rhetorical early bird does end up with the proverbial worm.

That said, the SCALE 15X “Early Bird” discount for the first-of-the-year North American Linux/FOSS expo ends in four days, on Jan. 22.

Also, you may want to act quickly in making your hotel reservations at the discount rates offered by both the Sheraton and Hilton hotels in Pasadena soon, because both hotels will be closing down the discount rates on Feb. 8.

As you may know, last year SCALE formed a diversity committee which was announced in December 2015. In that announcement I said the first thing we wanted to do was to collect, analyze and publish some data. Today, I give you that data. (Sorry for the delay - while this was originally written in May 2016, changes in SCALE staffing this year lead to a lot of additional work which delayed the lengthy edit and review process for this).